A Blog

Weinberg's Three Minutes

However all these (cosmological) problems may be resolved, and
whichever cosmological model proves correct, there is not much of
comfort in any of this. It is almost irresistible for humans to
believe that we have some special relation to the universe, that
human life is not just a more-or-less farcical outcome of a chain of
accidents reaching back to the first three minutes, but that we were
somehow built in from the beginning.

As I write this I happen to be in an airplane at 30,000 feet, flying
over Wyoming en route home from San Francisco to Boston. Below, the
earth looks very soft and comfortable--fluffy clouds here and there,
now turning pink as the sun sets, roads stretching straight across
the country from one town to another. It is very hard to realize
that this all is just a tiny part of an overwhelming hostile
universe. It is even harder to realize that this present universe
has evolved from an unspeakably unfamiliar early condition, and
faces a future extinction of endless cold or intolerable heat. The
more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems
pointless.

But if there is no solace in the fruits of our research, there is at
least some consolation in the research itself. Men and women are not
content to comfort themselves with tales of gods and giants, or to
confine their thoughts to the daily affairs of life; they also build
telescopes and satellites and accelerators, and sit at their desks
for endless hours working out the meaning of the data they gather.
The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things
that lifts human life a little above the level of farce, and gives
it some of the grace of tragedy.